restes

Restes is about transmissions, about a mortuary heritage imposed on the living.

It is about the 'remains' of a first name, a history, a genocide, a trauma, a wandering soul that can't find its way out. This solo is about origins and the family ties that carry us but sometimes become unbearable. Remains is a danced, spoken and whispered reflection on the dialogue with the ghosts that haunt us, on what we choose to reclaim or leave by the wayside, on the stories that are passed on to us in spite of ourselves. Remains is a tribute to Alphonse Eklou's uncle, Alphonse Kanimba, who died during the Tutsi genocide one day in April 1994.

During this residency, Alphonse Eklou wants to get closer to themselves as a person of immigrant background and understand how language created the first break in identity within their cultural cultural transmission.

"You stuttered at school, so we were told to speak to you only in French".

In the Eklou-Uwantege family, the parents speak Russian so that the children don't understand. Alphonse's grandmother and Alphonse don't speak the same language, so silence becomes their only means of communication. There's the way their mother speaks their language and the way Alphonse tries to understand hers. Encountering their own language, made up of the traces of those who have passed through their history and that of their family. Between Russian, Kinyarwanda, French and Ewe, unravelling these languages through their own. "So how do I speak? How do I speak to you?"